Human beings find it difficult to accept that they are mere animals

Human beings find it difficult to accept that they are only animals. Thus, despite the evidence that they are animals (their bodies composition is the same as those of animals, trees and other biological organisms, made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and traces of other elements) they deny the empirical evidence and keep claiming that they are something more than animals.

Generally, human beings posit what they call gods and claim to have come from the gods; the gods are made to look like human beings except that they are not in body (matter, space and time); they transcend the materials that limit human beings in body.

There are several ways of looking at this phenomenon:

Human beings make these claims because they are aware that their bodies are literally nothing, a bunch of flesh that would die, decay and smell worse than feces, so they feel worthless in body and seek worth in an imaginary origin in a nonphysical source, spirit, God.

Alternatively, they could be from the gods that they claim to have come from; if not, why this divine origin of people claim found all over the world; when a child cries in pain and points to a part of his body generally where he points at is the source of his pain, so since all ancient human beings point to God as their source they probably came from God, but what is God?

We certainly cannot ascertain that God that people say they originated from. Ascertain god or not, we must not cavalierly dismiss the possibility that people came from God; that claim may not be mere delusion, as Richard Dawkins and other shabby atheists claim; we should not quickly dismiss the idea of divine origin of human beings.

The idea of their origin in God tends to charm people and motivate them to do what to them seem great things.

If people only saw themselves as animals, eating and defecating they probably would not be as accomplishing as they have been; they would have satisfied themselves with being mere animals grazing grass.

The desire to be godlike gives people divine madness (delusion) to become something great; that divine madness propels people to accomplish all the things they have done on earth.

CONCLUSION

Regardless of your wishes, human beings everywhere will always struggle to seem important; they will always be doing what in their view is important in their lives, such as doing science and technology, pursuing wealth and power and organizing themselves in society; doing these things is who they are; they cannot stop doing them just because you wish that they do so; moreover, if they stopped doing them what else would they be doing with their lives, sit around doing nothing and be bored to death?

Those who teach being, doing nothing, such as Hindu gurus who ask people to stop looking outwards and sit in meditation and look inside to see their real selves, gods, and do nothing else are always going to be a minority of people; the majority of the people do things to adapt to their world and must take that world seriously to explore it.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji is from Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his PhD from UCLA. He taught at a couple of Universities and decided to go back to school and study psychology. Thereafter, he worked in the mental health field and was the Executive Director of two mental health agencies. He subsequently left the mental health environment with the goal of being less influenced by others perspectives, so as to be able to think for himself and synthesize Western, Asian and African perspectives on phenomena. Dr Osuji’s goal is to provide us with a unique perspective, one that is not strictly Western or African but a synthesis of both. Dr Osuji teaches, writes and consults on leadership, management, politics, psychology and religions. Dr Osuji is married and has three children; he lives at Anchorage, Alaska, USA.